Sleep is as natural to the human condition as breathing — and just as critical. Without it, we wouldn’t survive.

Despite that, sleep often doesn’t always come naturally, especially as we get older.

But one would thing it should come naturally when we’re young. And it does, of course.

But dealing with the seemingly random and choppy sleeping patterns of newborns can drive parents to distraction, not to mention the ups and downs of raising small children who won’t sleep when you want them to, and the challenges of nightmares and night terrors and the rest.

And if our kids don’t sleep, well, then neither do we. As if parenting isn’t tough enough already, exhaustion triggered by lack of sleep chips away at our health, shortens our fuses, and can harm our relationships with our spouses.

So it’s a big issue for parents; and joining us to talk about that today is Kida Stevens. Kida is a pediatric emergency nurse at Alberta Children’s hospital, a wondrously talented nurse who I’ve had the privilege of working alongside for fifteen years.

She’s also a parent of two kids — ages three and six — and she’s leveraged her experience as a mom and pediatric nurse to share her expertise in kids’ sleep issues with parents. She runs a sleep coaching business for paents called RestfulNights Sleep — restfulnightssleep.com

As always, thank you for listening.